Posts tagged with New Zealand

Did you know that 32 of New Zealand’s 44 native forget-me-not species are under some level of threat? That’s a whopping 75%! Sixteen of those species are in the “Threatened” category and another 16 are in the “At Risk” category of the New Zealand Threat Classification. Because such a high percentage of native forget-me-nots (genus:… Read more »

As the Science Collection Manager responsible for managing the botany collection, part of my job is to increase public access to the collection. One way to achieve this is through online narratives. This blog series will highlight some recent botany narratives. In this blog we introduce narrative topics of some recent, very significant, donations to the Te… Read more »

Te Papa Botany researchers Heidi Meudt, Jessie Prebble and Carlos Lehnebach have recently published a new paper in the scientific journal Plant Systematics and Evolution on New Zealand forget-me-nots (genus Myosotis). There are approximately 100 species of forget-me-not species in the genus Myosotis, about half of which are only found in New Zealand. In the… Read more »

The DeCLASSIFIED! citizen science projects have been running for nearly three months. These projects are an opportunity to learn spiders and ferns with Te Papa’s experts, and to help us with our research. The Ferns with Te Papa project has gathered up more than 920 observations from 59 contributors. 365 of these observations have been… Read more »

Right from the beginning TEAL, NAC and later Air New Zealand produced travel bags that reveal the company’s name, colours and logo. As such they are important markers of the changing face of the airline. Air New Zealand 75 years. Our nation. The world. Connected has a selection of these bags on display. They are… Read more »

A focus for my research in 2014 has been preparing an account on the Gleicheniaceae fern family for the online Flora of New Zealand. More on the revolutionary online Flora of New Zealand. The Gleicheniaceae in New Zealand comprises nine species in the genera Dicranopteris (one species, restricted to central North Island thermal areas), Gleichenia… Read more »

Recently I travelled to Stratford to attend the opening of Te Papa’s touring art exhibition Gordon Walters: Koru which is currently on show at the Percy Thomson Gallery. The exhibition includes a selection of the artist’s iconic koru works from the mid-1950s until the 1980s from Te Papa’s collection. It also includes rarely seen preparatory… Read more »

If you’re on the east coast of the North Island during this spring and summer, the Department of Conservation would like your help! Please look out for wild plants of the striking, red-flowered kakabeak. Department of Conservation’s blog post “Keep an eye out for kakabeak”. Kakabeak (kowhai ngutu-kākā, Clianthus maximus) is now Critically Endangered. Its… Read more »

I spent yesterday afternoon in the fernery of Otari-Wilton’s Bush, examining two tree fern species from New Zealand’s subtropical Kermadec Islands. More details below, including ‘why?’. But first, a challenge… Each of these Kermadec tree ferns is closely related to a (different) mainland New Zealand species. Can you tell which mainland species? One of the… Read more »

If you missed the live broadcast of Science Live: Secret World of Ferns, it’s now on YouTube so you can watch it now or anytime you like. The video explores the surprisingly complicated life-cycle of ferns, how to distinguish the different kinds of tree ferns, and we see inside the room holding Te Papa’s collection… Read more »